OPINION: Pastor Saraki: How not to pay last respect to the deceased! By Yusuf Muhammad

I was replying to my WhatsApp messages yesterday when a piece by one Wahab Oba, one of the former senate president Pastor Bukola Saraki’s minions, was shared across the groups I’m a member. Titled ‘AA, stop the shenanigans, leave the traditional rulers alone’, the article was a repeat of the lies against Governor Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman in the lead-up to the 2023 general elections that he ordered the traditional rulers in the state not to welcome members of the opposition parties to their palaces.

It was not long after the engine room of lies and propaganda in the state, Kwara People’s Democratic Party, PDP, shared the lie across social media platforms that his royal majesty Olofa of Offa Oba Mufutau Muhammed Gbadamosi Esuwoye II, debunked it and set the record straight. The revered monarch said Governor Abdulrazaq never ordered them to stop members of any political parties from coming to their palace to sell their candidacies. He said those who refused to welcome opposition parties did that at their volition.

The warped narrative in yesterday’s piece that the governor didn’t want the traditional rulers in the state to attend Saraki’s late mother’s burial ceremony was the recycling of the lie the PDP told in 2023. It’s only God who knows how the late Mrs Florence will be feeling on the other side of life right now after discovering that her beloved son and former governor has been using her passing to play his usual dirty politics. Is this how to pay a last respect to the deceased? Not. It’s only a child who does not respect their parents who bring them into political matters.

In the piece, the essayist also accused the governor of not showing sportsmanship because he didn’t personally visit the Sarakis and attend the burial ceremony. He mentioned some top members of the APC who visited him despite being in the opposition. However, he failed to acknowledge the fact that Governor Abdulrazaq was one of the first set of APC leaders who released statements to sympathise with the Sarakis a few hours after they announced the transition of their mother. What’s sportsmanship if not what the governor did?

Maybe Saraki and Wahab Oba wanted the governor to send all members of the State House of Assembly to the ceremony and empty Kwara’s treasury before they would know he cared. Sometimes, Saraki’s minions think others are as daft and deluded as them. Reading the article, I was expecting the author to mention how his paymaster paid a condolence visit to the family of his late predecessor, who he fought when he was alive and after his death. Instead, he went on to narrate how President Joe Biden and his family put a call through his archrival in the forthcoming presidential, Donald Trump, when the latter’s ear was shot by an assailant. Has Biden visited him?

Of course, Sarakites won’t commend AA for sympathising with the Sarakis via an emotional statement not until they review how their master has responded to the events of his political enemies including President Bola Tinubu who the writer said allowed his wife to pay a condolence visit to the bereaved in recent times. Since Saraki got his ‘wuru-wuru’ senate presidency which didn’t go down with many including Tinubu and the party, he has ignored anything that has his name on it. Just recently, President Tinubu celebrated his birthday and the ex-governor couldn’t wish him well. Or should we discuss how he disrespectfully ignored him at a certain event?

Mrs Florence is no more here with us and the best thing the former senate president and his siblings could have done for a loving mother was to organise a prayer session where people of her faith would beseech God to forgive her shortcomings and her among His beloved. Anything outside this is unnecessary. There is no point dragging the governor for not coming to pay your family a condolence visit when he had already shown sportsmanship by sympathising with your family in the open. A gesture you couldn’t extend when your predecessor passed on.

Muhammad, a political analyst, writes from Ilorin.